Zumajim

Came into the office at 6:00 AM (Pacific, of course) to watch the inauguration ceremony. I set up a streaming feed for the whole company to watch the ceremony via their desktop computers, so I have to babysit the system and hope 1000+ users don’t crash the entire network. That said, it’s a great day and I’m glad to be here nonetheless. The kids are staying home from school to watch with Mom.

It just dawned on me how truly historic this day is. Scanning the headlines, it’s obvious that most of the world thinks so, too. This is all quite a change from eight years ago. I’m really proud of our country once again.

Just after my last post, a routine system update to the Zumajim server hosed the network portion of the system, leaving this blog inaccessible. Perhaps that was fortuitous timing, since Christmas was one of the busiest ever. We spent the day normally enough, driving 100+ miles to visit both sides of the family. The kids are happy with their new iPod Touches, I’m three pounds heavier — not bad for this time of year. As always, Christmas went by in a blur. Most of the malls have already taken down their trees and decorations. I’m fine with that. Maybe one of these years we’ll celebrate it in true pagan fashion: Far away from the big city and giving thanks just for being able to keep warm. Maybe that mountain cabin in Big Bear…

The following Sunday we took off for a few days in Las Vegas, where if you like to see lots of bright, glittering lights, you’re in heaven. Stayed at the Mandalay Bay which was pretty nice. We were on the 60th floor overlooking the strip. (In Vegas, it helps to ask for an upgrade for just about everything… seating, meals, hotel rooms, etc.) We spent two full days just wandering the strip and ogling all of the amazing hotels. Nothing on Earth is more artificial and contrived than Las Vegas, and that’s its beauty.

I finally had some time to debug my server and got it back online. Zumajim runs on Fedora Linux, which can be a little too bleeding edge at times. Keeps you on your toes though.

Spent a week down in Borrego Springs to get away from the noise and commotion of the holidays. (Well, at least that was the idea.) A relative lets us use his little vacation house on the outskirts of town a couple of times a year, so we like to visit in the spring and fall. (Summers get a little on the toasty side so we stay home.)

The Anza Borrego desert can do the soul a world of good. It’s a great place to decompress: Vast, wild, and silent. There isn’t a single traffic light in the whole town. You can hike for miles in the foothills without seeing another soul. The town itself is well-stocked with a wide assortment of desert types: Artists, bikers, hermits and weirdos of all kinds. The only local scene is a wonderfully dumpy bar and grill called Carlee’s, right in the center of town off the “Christmas Circle” roundabout. If you’re in Borrego on a Friday night, Carlee’s is the place to be. Just don’t raise a fuss about the food prices because, as they’ll proudly tell you, they don’t care what you paid for it in San Diego.

Borrego is like a Palm Springs that never grew up.  If you’ve never heard of the place, you should know that the locals like it that way. They are (quite reasonably) protective of this little town. I for one hope it never “grows up.”

Well, in any case we’re home now. Malibu is not quite as lit up as usual for the holidays this year. Perhaps a sign of “these troubled economic times” (like that’s an issue with the average resident here!)

Bring on Christmas.

If your (American) family is long on tradition like mine, then Thanksgiving day is just an excuse to get together and feast with relatives, some of whom you prefer to see only once a year. This year I’m giving thanks for a whole new set of reasons, not the least of which is the resounding defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket. Yes, I’m still gloating!

If anyone still doubts that keeping Gramps McCain and his utterly bizarre and inappropriate choice for a running mate out of the white house, then watch this YouTube video of Sarah Palin back home in Alaska as she pardons a turkey from slaughter, while in the background other less-fortunate turkeys are mechanically executed by a very self-conscious farm worker.

It has to be one of the funniest yet most pathetic things I’ve ever seen, and I’m so very grateful that this woman is no longer just a hearbeat away from the presidency. Gobble gobble!

I almost wretched when I read that the CEOs for Ford, GM and Chrysler all flew on private jets to Washington DC this week to make the appeal for a government handout. Alan Mulally of Ford, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Richard Wagoner of GM all took their corporate Gulfstreams or Learjets or whatever at a cost of around $20,000 each (one way) to plead for taxpayer help in saving their bloated, top-heavy operations from bankruptcy. You talk about not getting it! That’s one mixed message they’re sending the shareholders and you and me. Ugh.

I’m really torn about the whole bailout issue for the Big Three. (I could care less about the banks and loan companies; greedheads whose “products” included the sub-prime loans that have undermined the entire US economy. Cars are another matter altogether.) My dad worked thirty years for GM, grinding out a career with barely adequate benefits and a minuscule pension. Now even the benefits are in jeopardy. Dad passed away almost ten years ago, leaving Mom as the sole beneficiary, and now she’s threatened with losing her health care coverage at a time when she needs it most. So now if I say to hell with the Big Three, I’m also saying I don’t care about Mom’s health care coverage. Lovely…

As to their collective futures, I’d love to see GM, Ford and Chrysler pull their collective heads out and show some real commitment to “ending our  dependence on foreign oil.” (That’s quoted in the same spirit as “keeping us safe from terrorism.”) But I’ve run out of sympathy for the CEOs.  The only way I’d agree to a Federal bailout is if they all bail out of their private jets — from 30,000 feet — without parachutes. Maybe with some younger, more open-minded leadership, they might even start making cars we’d want to buy again.

I’ve blogged before about the year-round fire season that we live in here in Southern California. If you ever needed proof that the global climate is getting warmer, move here. We haven’t had a decent rain spell in over three years, and even then, it was only during one month of the year. The part that really kills me is that you can count on the hated Santa Ana winds to kick in literally the day after the rain subsides. Thus, in the course of a few days, we go from drenched and muddy to hot and arid, even in the “winter” months. The rains now behave like ocean waves: They sweep in quickly and then just as quickly they recede, then the winds kick in and continue for a week and undo all of the good that the rain has brought.

As a kid, I remembered it raining periodically throughout the year. Not so anymore. My kids don’t even own raincoats. For them, a day of rain is a brief, distracting freak show.

I guess anywhere you live on the planet, the weather has its way of getting in your face. Ours just happens to be one of the more brutal ways: At this time last year we saw a wildfire torch parts of Malibu around Pepperdine University. We lost about 30 homes in that one. This afternoon I’m watching live coverage of a wildfire consuming Montecito, another beachside enclave near Santa Barbara. Over 100 homes have been destroyed so far and the pundits are saying it’ll be closer to 500 homes when the flames have subsided. God bless all those who lost their homes, and all the brave firefighters trying to save what’s left.

Seattle is looking better all the time.

I don’t know about you but I’m still pinching myself to see if I’m dreaming. Can it be that our country’s eight-year nightmare is finally coming to an end? I stayed up until almost 2:00 AM this morning poring over websites and the TV news channels just to make sure. I think it’s now safe to say that Barack Obama really will be our President come January 14, 2009.

It was eight years ago today that my wife and I awoke to a very different and very grim reality. We were in Windsor, England, on the final few days of a long European vacation. We sat in our hotel overlooking Windsor Castle, watching British news coverage of the 2000 presidential election. Oh, what a sad day that was, knowing that the country we were returning to was about to take a very serious turn for the worse. If I had only known how bad, I probably would have figured out a way to extend our expat vacation another, say, four years!

Looking back on the past two terms, I realize that all my children have ever known about the Presidency and the US political process has been distilled through my mutterings and rantings over the idiocies and deceits of the Bush administration. Hopefully, my cynicism and disdain haven’t completely turned them off to politics, but they are still small children susceptible to the influences of their parents more than anything else. Perhaps now they’ll see a new side… They’ll see dad finally show some enthusiasm and pride in our government. And they’ll no doubt see me smiling while our new President gives his inaugural address next January. Now there’s change for you!

It’s high noon in Malibu on this November 4th Election day. For the first time since I moved here in ‘93, I had to wait in line to cast my vote! If you believe the polls, this presidential election will have the highest voter turnout since ‘68. Here’s hoping we get a different result (democratic!) than that one.

Speaking of polls, I find them completely confusing and arbitrary. If  you want to know who’s going to win, ask the bookies! There’s money at stake, so they always seem to get it right. Sorry, Gallup.

If you haven’t done so yet, get out there and vote! And while you’re at it, vote Obama for President!

November 4th is just six days away and I’m wondering what that day will bring. If I’d had it a little more together, I would have voted absentee so at least I could finally ignore the endless flood of campaign advertising. So many people are griping about how the presidential election has turned into a two-year popularity contest and I think it’s true: It seems like ages ago that names like Clinton, Paul, Kucinich, Giuliani and Huckabee were in our ears daily. It seems like it’s been McCain vs. Obama for years. I guess I’ll be glad when it’s over, but really only hopeful if Barack Obama wins the election. And if he does? How shall we measure this “change” he has used as his primary buzzword? In my view, Obama’s cabinet will spend the first four years mopping up the mess that is our economy and international relations. Just trying to clean up the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle — a task that admittedly will take decades — is too much for one administration. So “change” at least for the first half of what I hope is at least eight years of a Democratic white house is going to be about reversing all the damage done by eight years of stupidity, arrogance and deceit. That’s no job I’d look forward to! And our incumbent gets the added good fortune of inheriting a death-spiraling economy to boot…

Without fear of jinxing the outcome, I’m going to welcome Mr. Obama and support his administration 100%. He has run an ethical, classy campaign. I think he even has the smarts to be our next president. Imagine that… a president with vision, a plan and brains. Imagine what we’ve been missing these past eight years.

The cynic in me is quoting, “Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill” but for now I’m telling him to shut up and let me be hopeful again, if only for a little while.